In general, a robot cleaner draws in foreign substances, such as dust, dirt, or the like, while traveling around by itself without a manipulation of user within an area to be cleaned, and thus automatically cleans that area.
The robot cleaner as described above has various kinds of sensors, particularly, a bumper sensor, mounted therein. The bumper sensor is installed in a front bumper of the robot cleaner to detect a collision with an obstacle in front of the robot cleaner. If the robot cleaner collides with an obstacle, the bumper sensor operates thus triggering the robot cleaner to back away by a predetermined distance in an opposite direction to its original travel direction, thereby avoiding the obstacle.
However, if the bumper sensor is not operating properly, the robot cleaner fails to avoid the obstacle, and instead continuously collides with it. Also, if after the robot cleaner collides with the obstacle, the bumper sensor is not reset or fixed, but instead is maintained in a detected state, that is, an ON state, the robot cleaner senses continuous colliding with the obstacle, and thus repeats backing up to avoid the collision with the obstacle. That is, if the bumper sensor continuously operates without being reset or fixed, a problem occurs, in that the robot cleaner repeatedly backs up until the electric power supply is cut thereto.